


It's Been A Privilege

by theplatinumprincess



Category: Original Work
Genre: Break Up, Crying, Older Woman/Younger Woman, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-06 09:43:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20289406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theplatinumprincess/pseuds/theplatinumprincess
Summary: Coming home only to find out you're alone.





	It's Been A Privilege

In her rush to be anywhere but there, she’d kicked over the neatly stacked manuscript and watched the sheets swirl round the room as a sudden breeze soared in and allowed nearly half to scatter through the open, curtainless window. She committed to memory the frustration and utter despair that welled inside of her, glancing about the room strewn with the remains of a year at work. The bubble of laughter that rose within surprised her, but she threw her head back to set it free, cackling with an edge of hysteria, and swished through the double doors, not giving a damn about anything other than the plain brown envelope she clutched.  
She felt an impending sense of doom lurking just beyond her, an anxiety attack on the cusp of her mind and attempted to pay it zero attention, focused entirely on sticking the key into the ignition, firing up her six year old F-type and driving the familiar route to her childhood home. She laughed again, how could she not? Three years, gone in the blink of an eye and afterwards, a brown envelope filled with the work of ten minutes from her dilettante. It was Thursday night, she was well-aware that the hour was later than she’d intended to return, but the high-profile supper she was attending had continued on after dessert and into the twilight hours. She was still in the surprisingly swishy affair that A. had designed for her when she’d turned the key in the grudging lock and— the apartment was bare and pristine. Well, mostly bare, she amended in her thoughts, recalling her wayward manuscript, and the letter she’d found. Thinking of the letter, remembering how it had come to be in her hand, caused a sob to leave her throat that did not surprise her one bit.  
‘Read Me’, it said, in pretty script on the front and she thought somewhat meanly that perhaps five more minutes of care and time had been spent measuring the apartment floor so that the letter would lie exactly centered within the now-empty apartment, than in actually writing its contents. 

Poem #30 (or, it's been a privilege)

What an invisible privilege  
Selfishness  
Manipulating those around me  
With my honesty and  
Immediate affection  
What a trick  
The best way to get  
Someone to love you  
Is to love them first  
Say it first  
Need it first  
You might say  
That the reason they stay  
Is to watch me wreck  
They can’t walk away  
They can’t look away  
Like when the Titanic sank  
Although I’ve never claimed to  
Be unsinkable  
I’m breakable  
It is all too possible to quarter me —  
Be ruined  
Into my separate parts.

I’m sorry for the things  
I said  
Burdened you with my  
Words and thoughts and moods and mess  
Compromised your happiness  
Like I do  
Unthinkingly  
Unflinchingly  
Shamelessly  
Well then, shame on me. 

I would scream at myself  
If it would do any good. 

Waves breaking against my  
house built on sand  
and crumbling resolve—  
Amidst all the tumbling down  
Living by the sea was my choice  
and all I had was you  
So I let myself try  
For a sign  
Patiently waiting for the tide  
Knowing there was more  
at risk than just my parapets  
But I didn’t bother to  
examine what it could’ve been  
and now I find that I was  
halfway right and the things I  
Wagered unknowingly  
Were your time and energy. 

Now there’s no one else to  
Make this right  
and honeyed words can only  
Go so far  
and I’m stretched thin as it is,  
waiting for —  
you to tell me the positive influence  
I’ve had in your life  
When you describe  
a few ways  
Of many I’m sure  
I’ve hurt you,  
Unintentionally,  
So much so that—  
Do you wish you’d never met me? 

If I could be strong  
if I could  
do it all again  
if I could  
be anyone other than myself  
for you— I would  
K. H.

She clutched the letter in her hand like a lifeline, if one could even call it a letter, and drove on, hot tears dripping down her face the entire way home.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm terrible with commitment. Perhaps something will bloom from these snippets.


End file.
